THE man convicted of the body-in-the-suitcase murders could be an international serial killer driven by sexual kicks.

Detectives said they could not rule out that Kyu Soo Kim could have killed before as he travelled around the world.

Detective Superintendent Peter Ship, of the Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Group, said: "There is no direct link or clear evidence of other offences. My concern is that he has committed two offences, which were very similar in nature, within a fairly short period of his life in the UK.

"I cannot rule out that he has committed other offences in other countries. He has had regular access and travelled regularly across Europe, South East Asia and has links to Canada, where we have drawn evidence.

"It clearly is a concern and we have linked with other law enforcement agencies, but it is not for us to say how far those investigations will go."

Kim had £17,000 credit card debts and had cleared out both women's bank accounts after he killed them, but money may not have been his sole motive.

Det Supt Ship said: "Clearly money was a motive, our concern was that it wasn't the only motive. There may have been some sort of sexual gratification on his part, but we think it is unlikely that the victims were willing participants in that."

Kim, who came to the UK in 2000 to study English, was said to have had "a fairly conventional, middle-class upbringing" in South Korea. His father owns a small herbal medicine business in the capital Seoul. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried.

As he refused to give evidence during the trial and gave mainly "no comment" interviews to police, what really drove him to kill may never be known.

Updated: 15:59 Tuesday, March 25, 2003